Dubbo or bust: mission accomplished

Malcolm Brown

Journey over, I arrived at the Dubbo cenotaph at 2.45pm on Wednesday after covering what one odometer reading calculated as 409 kilometres from Martin Place.

I did the walk in 16 days, including a day's rest at Mount Victoria and another at Molong, calculating the journey on an average of 30 kilometres a day, the distances varying between 22.4 and 37 kilometres.

Sydney has always been, in the 40 years I have lived there, a question of "beep, beep get out of my way", but when the coast disappeared on my descent down Mount York and the west began, people became more gracious, space opened up and I saw the way people were meant to live.

The mayor of Dubbo, Matthew Dickerson, came to meet me at the cenotaph and presented me with a gift on behalf of council and a thank-you for putting Dubbo on the map.

Two school mates, Peter Moffitt, a solicitor from Grenfell, and Alan McRae, a grazier from Tottenham, shook my hand, gave me $50 each for the Children's Hospital at Westmead and made their way home.

So did my sister Meredith Hatherly and her husband, David, who had been my road crew from Molong. They drove back to Canberra with their kelpie Suzie.

People have tooted me all the way down the highway, some have stopped to shake my hand and I've received gifts for the Children's Hospital varying from a few cents to $100, all of which I have documented as well as I have been able.

My formal sponsors had been former MP Franca Arena, property magnate Max Raine, and former media proprietor John Armati. Mr Armati, who gave me my first job as a reporter in 1969, has promised $10 a kilometre to go to Sydney Children's Hospital at Randwick.

I found the trip to be fascinating from all sorts of perspectives, including historical. I am now spending a few days in Dubbo and returning to Sydney by train.